Mauritanian security forces committed serious human rights violations between 2020 and early 2025 against largely West and Central African migrants and asylum seekers, often when they were seeking to leave or transit the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. However, recent steps and commitments by the Mauritanian government may improve protection for migrants and their rights.
The 142-page report, "'They Accused Me of Trying to Go to Europe': Migration Control Abuses and EU Externalization in Mauritania," documents abuses by the Mauritanian police, coast guard, navy, gendarmerie, and army during border and migration control, including torture, rape, and other violence; sexual harassment; arbitrary arrests and detention; inhumane detention conditions; racist treatment; extortion and theft; and summary and collective expulsions. The crackdowns and rights violations were exacerbated by the European Union and Spain, bilaterally, continuing to outsource migration management to Mauritania, including through years of support to Mauritania's border and migration control authorities.
"For years, Mauritanian authorities followed an abusive migration control playbook - sadly common across North Africa - by violating the rights of African migrants from other regions," said Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "But Mauritania's recent reforms show that a new approach is possible. The government should build on these efforts, scale up monitoring of security forces, and halt collective expulsions."
Between 2020 and mid-2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 223 people by phone and in person during visits to Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, and EU institutions in Brussels. In addition to 102 migrants and asylum seekers from Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, Human Rights Watch interviewed government, United Nations, and EU officials; members of nongovernmental and civil society organizations; relatives of abuse victims; witnesses; experts; lawyers; community members; and others.
Human Rights Watch examined injuries from alleged abuse; collected photos, videos, and documents to corroborate accounts; and, in 2022 and 2023 in Mauritania, visited migrant detention centers and Dar Naïm prison, which held people on migrant smuggling charges.
Human Rights Watch documented violations by Mauritanian security forces between 2020 and 2025 against 77 migrants and asylum seekers - men, women, and children - and a Mauritanian man, who said police tortured him during migrant-smuggling-related interrogations in 2022.
Increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers between 2020 and 2024 attempted the "Atlantic Route" by boat from northwest Africa to Spain's Canary Islands, with many departing from Mauritania. Some have fled conflict or persecution in their countries - including many from Mali, where armed conflict has worsened alongside government repression - while others aimed to escape poverty and find work. In 2024, a record 46,843 people arrived by boat in the Canaries. About 11,500 people arrived between January and July 2025.
Mauritania has also long attracted West and Central Africans seeking work, and it hosts about 176,000 registered asylum seekers and refugees, the majority from Mali. Some migrants seek to transit Mauritania toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Morocco, or Algeria.
In 2024, Mauritania signed a new migration partnership with the EU in exchange for €210 million in funding to reduce irregular migration, comparable to other EU deals with Tunisia and Egypt. Spain increased its bilateral support to the same end, while maintaining deployment of Spanish police and civil guard in Mauritania to assist authorities with migration control.
Dozens of people who had been held in Mauritania's police-run migrant detention centers described inhumane conditions and treatment, including lack of food, poor sanitation, adolescent children at times detained with unrelated adults, and some beatings by guards.
Between 2020 and mid-2025, Mauritanian police expelled tens of thousands of African foreigners of multiple nationalities - generally without formal legal procedures or an opportunity to challenge their expulsion - to remote locations along the borders with Mali and Senegal, where limited aid, plus worsening insecurity in Mali's Kayes region, has put people at risk. In the first half of 2025, Mauritania expelled over 28,000 people, the government said.
Marco Gibson, a Liberian man, said Mauritania's military arrested him with a group of over 40 migrants near Mauritania's northern border in December 2024, as they were leaving toward Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara: "The Mauritanian army … beat us with sticks … [and] a rubber whip…. I've never seen such a brutal attitude." Following detention, police expelled him and around 20 others, including children, to Mali's border town of Gogui, in the Nioro du Sahel area of Kayes region, he said. Days later, an Islamist armed group attacked Nioro.
Human Rights Watch has documented police use of prolonged, painful restraints, limited food and water, and other mistreatment during expulsions, as well as cases of children, asylum seekers, and people with valid legal status in Mauritania among those expelled.
The report also highlights the negative impacts of Mauritania's interceptions and forced returns of migrant boats, supported by the EU and Spain, while search-and-rescue in the Atlantic remains insufficient, contributing to ongoing deaths.
By funding, equipping, and collaborating with Mauritanian forces for years to bolster border and migration controls without ensuring adequate human rights safeguards, the EU and Spain incentivized repression of migration and share responsibility for abuses in Mauritania, Human Rights Watch said. In some cases, Spanish forces were present during abusive arrests and detention of migrants by Mauritanian authorities. The EU also funded renovations of two former migrant detention centers, set to open this year to receive migrants intercepted or rescued at sea.
In a reply to questions from Human Rights Watch, the Mauritanian government said it "reject[s] allegations of torture, racial discrimination, or systematic violations of migrants' rights." It cited recent steps to improve respect for rights, including a "ban on collective expulsions" and new standard operating procedures (SOPs) adopted in May 2025 to regulate disembarkations and "management" of migrants, with strong rights and protection guarantees.
The European Commission, in its reply to Human Rights Watch, said its partnership with Mauritania was "solidly anchored" in respect for rights and cited EU support for the SOPs and other rights-focused initiatives.
"The Mauritanian government's steps to improve respect for migrant rights are much needed," Seibert said. "By going further to end abuses, Mauritania could potentially lead the way toward rights-respecting migration management in North Africa. For their part, the EU and Spain should ensure that their migration cooperation with Mauritania prioritizes rights and saving lives, instead of supporting security crackdowns that lead to abuses."
